OL98: New 020 London Area Code Is Interpreted as a Country Code for Egypt (258945)

The information in this article applies to:

Microsoft Outlook 98

This article was previously published under Q258945

SYMPTOMS

If you set your dialing location to London, England, and then create a contact that contains the new London area code (020) in the Telephone Number field, Outlook incorrectly interprets the contact's country as Egypt.

CAUSE

Neither the United Kingdom (UK) nor Egypt use a fixed length for area codes or local telephone numbers. If you type "20 343 3434" (without quotation marks), Outlook cannot parse the number. As a result, you see the Phone Number Confirmation dialog box and, by default, Outlook regards this three-part number as an Egyptian telephone number.

RESOLUTION

A supported fix that corrects this problem is now available from Microsoft, but it has not been fully regression tested and should be applied only to systems experiencing this specific problem.

To resolve this problem, obtain the patch from the following Microsoft Office Update Web site:

http://office.microsoft.com/downloads/9798/ol98uk.aspx

The English-language version of this fix should have the following file attributes or later:

Version        File name   
---------------------------
8.5.7522.0     Outllib.dll
               Msoutl85.olb

STATUS

Microsoft has confirmed that this is a problem in the Microsoft products that are listed at the beginning of this article.

MORE INFORMATION

The London area code, 020, will be in use after April 22, 2000. Area codes and local telephone numbers are not in a fixed length format in the UK. The format for the new eight-digit (London) numbers is "9999 9999" (without quotation marks).

Modification Type:	Minor	Last Reviewed:	9/23/2005
Keywords:	kbHotfixServer kbQFE kbdownload kbbug kbfix KB258945